


Little Secrets

by Poetry



Category: Doctor Who, Torchwood
Genre: Angst, Gift Fic, Jack Harkness Backstory, Multi, Non-Explicit Sex, POV Alternating, PTSD, Past Child Abuse, Polyamory, Romance, Threesome - F/M/M, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 16:53:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To preserve the timeline, the Doctor, Jack, and River have to guard their little secrets from each other. But the big ones, the important ones, that come from the heart – those they always find a way to share, no matter how painful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Joanne_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joanne_c/gifts).



_Interlude._

 

"Hello, Jack."  
  
"Which Doctor is this?"  
  
"Eleventh. Tall, elegant, cool bow tie. Have you met me yet?"  
  
"Sure. Have you met me yet, with your current face?"  
  
"No, not as such, just wanted to ask you a favor."  
  
"How did you get this number, then? I haven't given it to you yet."  
  
"Tracked down your Vortex manipulator. Wasn't hard."  
  
"You kept the energy signature from my Vortex manipulator? That's sweet. So, what can I do for you?"  
  
"There are some very bad people who abducted my friend Amy, hid from her that she was pregnant, and now they want to take away her baby. I will not let that stand. I'm gathering an army, and I'd like you to be in it."  
  
"I can't."  
  
"Oh. Well, if you'd rather not, that's – all right, then."  
  
"No, Doctor, it's not like that. I would if I could. But Amy and Rory have already met me for the first time, and that hasn't happened for them yet. If they saw me now, I'd have to wipe their memories, and I can't do that to them."  
  
"Oh. I see. Well, that's – good, timelines are delicate, you can't go plucking at them willy-nilly – wait, how did you meet them?"  
  
"Spoilers, Doc."  
  
"Everyone says that to me these days. Is this some sort of trend? Have all my friends decided that's the magic word to say when they're keeping secrets from me? I like it better when I'm the one with mysterious secrets."  
  
"And I think you're adorable when you're clueless. Bye, Doctor. Call me again sometime. And good luck."

 

_Luna University, Sol System, 5108, first term._

 

River was in his class on the history of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire. She sat across the table from him, and when Professor B'gnha showed a holo, it lit her curls blue and red and green.

Her neighbor was pretty too: she breathed out plumes of iridescent pink gas that formed a veil around what he was pretty sure was her head, giving her an intriguing air of mystery. He spent a lot of time looking at both of them. But he found himself watching River more, right from the first lesson, when Prof. B'gnha had shown holos of blank-eyed slave Ood with orbs in their hands where brains should be, and River had looked at those pictures, really looked, as if they were real people telling her a story, not just images suspended over a classroom table.

He kept watching her next lesson, and as he did, he noticed more. The tuition at Luna University was subsidized by students' ability to pay, but passage to Luna from outside the system wasn't cheap, and most Luna students were from elsewhere. He could recognize the subtle flourishes of human-designed clothing, unique details that no computer could dream up. River's clothes, like his, were more generic, printed from machine templates.

He also noticed that she was watching back.

He stopped River after class and said, "Care to come to my place for a drink, River?"   

River raised an eyebrow. "You're very bold, for one so young. Aren't you going to take me out for a drink first?"   

"Bars around here charge an arm and a leg. Can't afford it. I've got some nice local brew at my place, though." Plenty of students would turn up their noses at that. He waited to see how River would react.   

She laughed. "Oh, do I know it. I can't afford it either. I thought I might charm you into buying me a drink. Can't blame a girl for trying, can you?"   

"Can't buy you a drink, but I can make you a cocktail."

River gave him a smile, tucked in at the corners, and said, "Fine. I will. You could get away with murder with a face like yours, you know."

He wiggled his eyebrows. "Maybe I have." He pointed south along the hall. "My quarters are this way."   

"Quarters? I like to think of mine as a den. Maybe even a lair."   

"Quarters makes it sound so official, though."

The crowd of students spilling out of their classes thinned out as they walked toward Jack's quarters. He lived in the dome where most of the university staff lived. There were no views of Earth from these windows, just dark barren moonscape. He unlocked his door and let River take in the wicker furniture, wall tapestries, and rush mats of his parlor.

She took a moment to glance around, then sprawled out on the cushions of a wicker couch. "Rustic," she said. "Where are the tapestries from?"   

"Home," he said. They were all he'd been able to salvage from the ruins of his village, and even then he'd spent hours cleaning off the ash. No need to be more specific than that. He'd gotten every type of pitying look that sentient life had to offer from people who knew he was from Boeshane.   

"They're lovely. I've never seen blues so vivid. You must either love the ocean or you're vain enough to have picked these just to match your eyes."   

"A little of both." He sat in the chair across from her and leaned forward. "So. What brings you to this class?"   

"I'm in the Archaeology program." When he raised his eyebrows, she said, "Oh, don't tell me, you're in Temporal Dynamics, aren't you? You think time travel makes my field obsolete, the lot of you. Well, I don't like the thought of worrying every moment about whether I'm about to interfere in the wrong event and tear apart the fabric of spacetime. I wouldn't trust myself with that sort of responsibility. I'd much rather review the evidence from here, thank you very much."   

"You didn't strike me as the safe type."   

"Oh, I'm not. I plan to go on all sorts of adventures looking for artifacts. But I'll do it without time travel. It's too dangerous and I don't need it."   

"Fair enough. Though I'll have you know I have to take absolutely mind-bending classes in quantum temporal phenomenology to make sure I don't tear apart the fabric of spacetime. But let's not argue majors. That never goes anywhere good." He flourished his hands in a formal gesture. "What sort of drink may I fetch you, madam?"   

"Got any of that Ol' Janx Spirit?"   

"Oh, you bet. Let me serve it to you my way. I'm sure you'll like the results." He went back into his kitchen, pressed the panel that folded out the bar, and set the essence of greenfresh warming on the plate. He ducked into his closet to sweep on a long blue coat and brush augments onto his face that settled smoky on his eyelids and luminous on his temples. The look was delicious on him, he knew.   

He mixed the cocktails, greenfresh and cranapple and Ol' Janx spirit warm in porcelain cups, and served them on a tray. When he came back in, River was staring at him intently, and not just because he looked pretty: her eyes were just a little too wide as they lingered on his coat. She sat up straight.   

He put down the tray and raised his eyebrows. "What is it?"   

"I remember you," she said.    

"Sorry, can't say the same," he said. "I'm sure you would stick in my mind. Must be my future." Babble sprung to his lips and a fake smile stretched his mouth as River's focused silence made him more and more nervous. "So. Good memory or bad memory?"   

Her gaze shifted, finally to his eyes. Then she sprang forward, grabbed him by the coat lapels, and kissed him bruisingly. His parents had always taught him it was rude to kiss someone without asking, but he wasn't about to complain. He kissed back, and when they came up for air he gasped, "Good memory, then?"

"Shut up, Jermain Highbridge," said River. "I've wanted to do this for years."

 

_Boeshane Peninsula, Xharen System, 5099._

 

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and instantly choked on ash and dust. He would have gone straight back in if it weren't for the sound of a child crying.  
  
He squinted his eyes against the stinging dust in the air and found that he was between a cliff's edge and a half-ruined structure that might once have been a longhouse or a hall, its timbers and stone pillars bare to the scouring wind like exposed ribs. The pained cries came from inside.  
  
The Doctor shaded his eyes with a hand and carefully ducked into the ruins. They sheltered him somewhat from the airborne grit, and he breathed easier. He saw the telltale signs that this building had once been a home: a shattered shrine, its shattered vial of holy water dampening the dusty floor, a fine set of lacquered chopsticks strewn among the rubble. He forced himself away from the grim details, toward the sound of distress. There was a youth of fifteen or sixteen with his legs pinned beneath a collapsed beam. He lay facedown, struggling to get free.  
  
"Hush, lie still," said the Doctor, raising his voice to be heard over the hot harsh wind. "Let me lift that off you."  
  
The boy went limp, as if he'd finally been given permission, and sighed relief. The Doctor knelt, got his hands under the free end of the beam, and stood up, putting his back and legs into it. When the boy felt the weight lift from his legs, he dragged himself forward with his arms, then tucked his legs into his chest in the fetal position. The Doctor let the beam fall back down, raising a cloud of razor-edged dust that made him cough again.  
  
He knelt next to the boy. "How are your legs?"  
  
The boy looked up at him, and the Doctor's muscles well near leaped out of his skin as he fought the impulse to jump back in surprise. Even through all the intervening years and the layers of ash and grime, he knew that face. It was Jack Harkness, though he hadn't come by that name yet.  
  
Jack uncurled his legs, slowly, wincing. "Hurts," he said, his voice wavering, trying to break. "But I think I can stand."  
  
"I'll help you up." The Doctor wrapped an arm around Jack's shoulders and pulled him to a seated position, then tucked his hand under Jack's armpit while the boy got his legs under him. He leaned against the Doctor for support, but managed to stand.  
  
"Let's get you out of here," the Doctor said. "Can you walk?"  
  
"No!" Jack cried. "I mean, yes, I can walk, but I can't leave yet. My mom's tapestries are here, please, they're all I have left."  
  
"Show me where they are, then, and I'll help you fetch them."  
  
"Why are you helping? What are you even doing here? You're not Boeshani," said Jack, looking at the Doctor's clothes. The Doctor looked back at Jack's clothes. He had a point: Jack wore a vest open over his chest, and a torn sarong that had probably once been vivid sea green. The Doctor was obviously not from around here.  
  
"Do I have to be Boeshani to care about a young man who just lost his home?" the Doctor said gently.  
  
Jack looked at him with those blue eyes, with more trust than the Doctor had seen there in centuries. "Fine," he said. "But you'd better take me straight to my transport after."  
  
"Your transport?"  
  
"Only way out of here if you don't have a ship of your own. Military. Recruitment or evac, take your pick."  
  
"You've picked recruitment."  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"Because you don't want to run away. You want revenge. I ought to know. I made the same choice." The Doctor squeezed him. "Come on. Which way are the tapestries?"  
  
Jack pointed around a ceiling-high pile of rubble. "Behind there. I think."  
  
"That pile could fall over at any moment. Stay here, and lean against that pillar, it looks more stable. I'll get them."  
  
Jack gave him another long look through his eyelashes, then propped himself up against the pillar. The Doctor picked his way over broken glass, light on his toes, always keeping one eye on the unsteady pile of rubble. There was a stack of dirty thick cloths lying on the ground. The Doctor couldn't tell if they were tapestries or sleep mats, but he rolled them up into a tube and slung them over his shoulder anyway.  
  
As he walked back, the tube of tapestries hit the pile and knocked a stone loose. It rumbled and began to crumble. A brick bounced painfully off the Doctor's shoulder. He ran, shouting, "Get outside! The whole building could collapse!"  
  
Jack stumbled toward an opening in the wall. The Doctor used his free arm to hook around Jack's so they could run together out of the ruins. The wind slammed their faces with hot searing grit. "Which way's your transport?" the Doctor shouted.  
  
"That way!" Jack pointed. "There's a road!"  
  
"I don't see one!" Oh, how he wished he could just take Jack in the TARDIS, away from this nightmare. But he couldn't change the timeline of a fixed point, the universe would probably collapse, and besides Jack didn't want to be whisked away. He would stand and fight, just as the Doctor did for his planet.  
  
"Trust me, just keep walking. As long as I can lean on you a little longer, I'll make it."  
  
Sure enough, the crunch of dead grass beneath their feet made way to pitted stone. The Doctor shut his eyes entirely and let Jack's body language guide him, keeping his grip firm beneath Jack's arm and the tapestries well balanced on his shoulder.  
  
"There," said Jack. The Doctor slitted open his eyes and saw a flashing red light through the swirling ash. "That'll be the transport. Give me the tapestries and turn back. If the troops see you – well, I can't be sure what they'll do."  
  
"Are you sure you can carry them?"  
  
"No. But I have to try." Even through the gritty air, the Doctor could see the determined set of Jack's shoulders. He passed over the tapestries.  
  
"I'd give you a kiss, if you'll accept," said Jack. "As thanks." There was a formal cadence to his words, and the Doctor suddenly wondered why he'd never asked Jack about the traditions of his home.  
  
"You may," said the Doctor.  
  
Jack used his free hand to pull the Doctor's head down, by the back of the neck, and kissed him between the eyes. "Ocean tides bring you fortune," he whispered, and walked toward the blinking red eye of the military ship.

 

_Luna University, Sol System, 5108, second term._

_  
_"671, 672... 673, aha!" The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver at the door to flat 673 in Tranquility Dome.  
  
"Are we sure she's in there?" said Rory.  
  
"No," said the Doctor, "but if she isn't, we'll just pop back in the TARDIS and try the same time tomorrow. Easy peasy." The door clicked open. "There! Now let's just..."  
  
He pressed the door inward with his fingertips, stuck his head through the gap between door and frame – and froze.  
  
River Song and Jack Harkness were sitting cross-legged on the floor, eating crunchy snacks from bowls, with shining black bands over their eyes and ears that meant they were sharing immersion in a holodream. They were also stark naked.  
  
The Doctor felt a desperate floundering horror in his gut, quickly burned away by the flush rising to his cheeks. He didn't know where to look. He knew where he _wanted_ to look, and it seemed this wasn't the naughtier sort of holodream, but he shouldn't be looking there and _what was Jack Harkness doing in here naked with River?_  
  
He backed away from the door slowly.  
  
"Amy, Rory, I think you should go in and talk to River. Though, just as a warning, she hasn't got any clothes on, and she's with a man whose clothes also seem to be elsewhere."  
  
"You sound very, ah, composed about this, Doctor," said Rory.  
  
"Of course I'm composed. Nothing Mozart ever wrote was ever as composed as me. I'm also very confused, a little bewildered, and things will get awkward if I go in there so I need you to do it."  
  
"Don't worry, Doctor, I'll have words with her," said Amy, moving toward the door.  
  
"There's no need for words. No words except 'Hello, River, could you meet us later at a café?'"  
  
"If that's all you've got to say to her, then why don't you do it?" Amy demanded.  
  
"Because," the Doctor said impatiently, "I know that man she's currently starkers with, and if he sees me he's going to ask a lot of questions I can't answer without his timeline and possibly the universe imploding."  
  
"Is he making that up?" Amy asked Rory. "I can't tell if he's making it up or not."  
  
"The Doctor's life is mad enough that I, for one, am ready to believe it. But it doesn't matter anyway. Clearly he's not going in there, and someone's got to, so we're going to be responsible parents and – "  
  
"Walk in on her with a boy when she's naked. This is so embarrassing. Doctor, you owe us for this."  
  
They went through the door and closed it behind them. The Doctor pressed his ear to the door, but heard nothing. A few minutes later, Amy and Rory came back out, both blushed red as tomatoes.  
  
"How do you know Jermain, exactly?" said Amy.  
  
"He's the biggest flirt I've ever met, and I've known Amy and Mels almost my entire life," said Rory.  
  
"Never mind Jermain right now, what did River say?"  
  
"She said she'll meet us at the Ship and Cargo in an hour," said Amy. "Doctor, are you sure you aren't jealous?"  
  
The Doctor considered this. He remembered how he'd felt as a younger man, when he and Jack and Rose had huddled by a fire after spending two days on an iceberg, and Jack had looked at Rose's lips and then at him, seeking permission, and after a long painful hesitation he had nodded. What happened next crackled as pleasantly in his mind as the fire had on their cold hands: Jack devouring Rose's mouth, all because the Doctor had told him he could. It seemed it was their fate to share a love for a fierce and clever woman. If River or Jack ever bothered to ask him for permission, he wouldn't deny it for the world.  
  
"Not at all," the Doctor said. "River and I aren't like you and Rory. I know you have a certain way of doing things in the 21st century, but River and I aren't 21st century people. Just trust me, all right? I know what I want to say to her."  
  
"Fine," said Amy. "But if she breaks your heart, I'll tan her hide. Same goes for you."  
  
"We probably both deserve a good tanning already, in that case, so I'll thank you to take that back. Let's go have a drink at the Ship and Cargo, shall we? People-watching on the Moon, eh? Haven't done that before."  
  
They settled in a corner of the pub, scented with the harmless smoke that puffed out from the air converters attached to the mouths and gills of those customers that didn't breathe oxygen. It was a pleasant, gritty sort of smell the Doctor always associated with multi-species space stations of the sixth millennium. The Doctor had convinced Amy to try a glass of Kronka with him, while Rory nursed a beer that he complained tasted funny (that was because they used the stomach of a Betelgeusian actinosaur to ferment the grain instead of yeast, but he wasn't about to tell Rory that.)  
  
River came in, clothed at last in a tan dress and a leather vest, and ordered something fizzing and black. She sat next to him in the booth, and he saw the glow to her cheeks and the satisfied curl to her mouth and wondered what Jack had done to put her that way.  
  
"River!" said Amy, leaning toward her over the table. "How are you?"  
  
"How are your classes? Getting good grades?" said Rory.  
  
"My classes are lovely. Discussion-based learning. The teachers don't mind when I challenge them with my own notions, so long as I back them up with evidence."  
  
"You're not telling them the Doctor did everything, like you used to, are you?" said Amy.  
  
"You said I did everything?" the Doctor said.  
  
"I may have," River said. "A few times."  
  
"A few times!" Amy said.  
  
"All right, lots of times. But now I do research to prove it. Did you know you and one of your companions are household gods to an Ancient Roman family, Doctor?"  
  
"No," the Doctor said, "but I'm not surprised."  
  
"So," said Amy. "Who's this Jermain fellow? How do you two know him?"  
  
"He helped me when I was a girl," said River. "He called himself Jack, then. It hasn't happened for him yet, but he found me a family in Leadworth who could understand who and what I was."  
  
"Mary knew that you're part Time Lord?" Amy said.  
  
"No. But she knew I wasn't human. She had to. There were times when I could feel the whole universe flowing through my mind, and I didn't know how to live with it, because the Silence never taught me how: only how to kill. She made it better, as much as she could. I know I was trouble even before Mary died, but she did her best. If I had been in anyone else in charge of me, I don't know what I might have done." She took a long pull from her fizzy drink. "I met him again in history class. He's going for his certification in temporal technology. I've had a chance to thank him for what he did, even if he hasn't done it yet."  
  
"He's the one who brought you to Leadworth," the Doctor murmured.  
  
"Yes," said River. "And I'll always be grateful."  
  
"What about you, Doctor?" said Rory. "How do you know this man?"  
  
"I'm sorry, River, I can't tell you," the Doctor said. "If I do, you might slip up and tell him something he ought not to know, and I can't take that risk. Find me after he's finished up his program here at Luna and I'll tell you."  
  
River's lips pressed together, and her hand dropped to the pocket of her leather vest, which was stretched square with the shape of her diary. "You don't trust me with this?"  
  
"I do. With my life, always." He caught her free hand in his. "This is different. Disrupting Jack's timeline would be bad. Very bad. As bad as going back and giving Beethoven a hearing aid. No, worse. Much worse. He's a point where so many timelines turn. So we've got to be careful." He squeezed her hand. "River, you have to understand. These things are just little secrets. It's the big secrets you ought to worry about, and you can ask me about those any time you like."  
  
"I'm not sure what to ask," River said. Her eyes were huge, and lingered on every corner of his face, searching.  
  
"It'll come to you. Now, I need you to make a section at the back of your diary. That's for writing down what happens between you and Jack. Use it the way you use the diary with me."  
  
River nodded and took out her diary. When the Doctor looked back at Amy and Rory, they were watching him with the strangest expressions on their faces.  
  
"You really aren't jealous, are you?" said Amy.  
  
"Of course he isn't," said River, not looking up from the diary. "He shares the two of you with each other, doesn't he?"

 

_New York City, New York, 1938._

 

Jack stayed at a flophouse on the Bowery, even though Torchwood had given him the budget to stay at the Ritz. He liked it better here: the people came in more than one color, and more than two genders, moaning into each other's mouths in every possible combination behind closed doors or even in the corridors.  
  
He ended up in bed with the hotel receptionist, once she was done with her shift, and woke up with her dark lipstick smeared across his face and neck. He gave her a light when she asked for one, and watched the morning light play across her arms as she leaned out the window for a smoke. She looked nothing like Angelo had when he leaned out of his tiny apartment window to catch the city's first breath of traffic-scented air, but the image was superimposed over her in Jack's eye, like a slide projection. He kissed her goodbye before she went home to change clothes for her next shift.  
  
In the empty hotel room, Jack opened the battered leather disguise of his briefcase. The artron energy detector was a monstrous brick of an instrument to his aesthetics, but the readings he got off the needles still added up. He scribbled calculations in a small notebook. The artron energy residue was half a mile north and a tenth of a mile west of here; he had to hurry to catch it before it shifted again.  
  
Jack walked north along the Bowery with his briefcase, past the barbers offering ten-cent shaves and the winos sleeping off the night in cocoons of old rags. As he got closer to Union Square, the crowds became less diverse and better dressed. People rushed off to work, or pushed their children along in prams. He turned east, then paused a moment in the shade behind a kiosk to discreetly check inside his briefcase. Yes, he must be just across the street now.  
  
The building across the street was a Horn & Hardart automat. The smell of coffee enveloped his face as he stepped inside. The walls were lined with little metal niches with coin slots beside them. Men in battered caps slipped nickels into the slots and opened the doors to take out bowls of hot cereal and mugs of steaming coffee.  
  
Among the seated crowd eating breakfast, he saw two faces from a lifetime ago. Two lifetimes ago, really. _Those are my friends, Amy and Rory,_ River had said, when they had barged into the flat to talk to her and shoot him disapproving looks. _Don't mind them, they're just protective._  
  
They were dressed for the time period, Rory in a flat brown cap and Amy in a skirt past her knees with neat white stockings underneath. Not amateurs, not like Rose in 1941 with her 21st century fabrics. Time travelers, and just maybe a chance of freedom from Torchwood's yoke. River hadn't told him everything. But he hadn't told her everything either.  
  
Jack paid a nickel for a coffee and joined them at the table. They looked up at him and stared open-mouthed. Rory's fork fell from his hand and rattled on his plate.  
  
"Jermain," said Amy.  
  
"Hi," said Jack, taking a drink of coffee. "You remember me. I'm touched."  
  
"Bit hard to forget," said Amy, smiling a little into her coffee cup.  
  
Jack winked. "That's what they tell me."  
  
"Yes, this is, um, very nice and all," said Rory, "but what are you doing here?"  
  
"Didn't River tell you? I was in the Temporal Dynamics program at Luna."  
  
"Yes, she did. But why here? Why now? I get the feeling this isn't a social call," Amy said.  
  
"It could be if you want," said Jack. "But first things first: I'm stuck here. My ride out is broken." He tapped his wrist strap. "When I saw you here, well, I hoped you could..."  
  
"So's ours," said Amy. "Well, not exactly. You'd know better, with your temporal dynamics and all. We're an unstable temporal anomaly, or something. Move us in time and the history of Manhattan implodes."  
  
Jack had heard of that happening before, if you got careless, or there was too much timeline crossing at one point. The timelines grew weak, vulnerable to any further interference, and you were stuck. Even more stuck than he was.  
  
He slugged back coffee. "I'm sorry." His mouth twitched. "Don't suppose you've still got your time travel tech with you, huh?"  
  
Amy and Rory looked at each other. "No," they said.  
  
"Listen," said Jack. "I have resources. I can get you identities, paperwork, whatever you need."  
  
"Nursing certification?" said Rory.  
  
"Sure," said Jack.  
  
"Why are you doing this for us?" said Amy, taking a sip of her coffee. Her gaze was level, her voice even. He didn't think she was suspicious, not exactly. She wanted to know what kind of man he was.  
  
"Because you're River's friends," Jack said. "She loves you. I could see it in her eyes when she introduced us. That's a good enough character reference for me."  
  
"Thank you," said Rory. "I've missed being a nurse more than anything else. You'll give us a life back."  
  
Jack believed it. He hadn't gotten his back, not in all his wanderings in this foreign time. But it was much easier to build a life when you knew it had an expiration date.

 

_Luna University, Sol System, 5109, second term._

_  
_River went with him to the spaceport, their fingers loosely entwined. She watched him, and saw so much in him she couldn't have seen before: which of his smiles were real and which were summoned up for her benefit, the possessive grip on the shoulder bag that held his tapestries, and the clench of sadness at the corners of his eyes and mouth. All together she saw that he wanted very much whatever was next for him, but that he wished he didn't have to leave her.  
  
"This doesn't have to be the end," she said, as they drew near Jermain's shuttle. "I've told you I love another man. I don't see him often, and I never know when the next time will be. But I love him all the same, and I know he wouldn't abandon me."  
  
"He has a way back to you, though, doesn't he?" Jermain said. "How will I know where to find you?"  
  
"Don't worry about that. I'll find you. I have my ways."  
  
"Is that a promise?" A flirt, by the cant of his head, but his eyes didn't smolder with it.  
  
"Yes," said River, kissing him. He kissed back, tentatively, searchingly. She pulled away and murmured into his ear, "I don't know where you're going, but whatever you do, I hope it's good. You deserve it."  
  
"I want to make a difference. I think I can." He breathed out, a fluttering of air against her cheek. "I can't tell you where I'm going. I'm sorry, River, but you won't be able to find me."  
  
"You'll see me again. I remember. Trust me. I have my little secrets too."  
  
He framed her face with his hands. "Goodbye, River. And good luck discovering the past." He shifted the tapestries on his shoulder. "I see now how important that is." He kissed her one last time. "I love you. Whenever or wherever I see you again, I won't forget."  
  
She watched him board the shuttle, watched its engines glow hot and propel toward the sky. Then she called Amy's mobile.  
  
"Tell the Doctor to come to Luna," she said. "The Ship and Cargo. Does he know where that is?"  
  
"Of course, we've been there before," Amy said.  
  
"I had to make sure," River said, and heard an oh of comprehension on the other end. "I just said goodbye to Jermain."  
  
"Oh, River. I'm sorry."  
  
"I'll be all right. I just need to hear the rest of his story now."  
  
As she waited for them at the Ship and Cargo, River took out her diary and flipped to the back section, labeled "Blue-Eyed Charmer." She started a new entry with the story of how she and Jermain had just parted, with room for the Doctor's new information to follow. She nursed a glass of greenfresh and ice-whiskey, and thought of Jermain each time the taste of cool green leaves bloomed across her tongue.  
  
When the Doctor came in, he picked her out immediately from the crowd, as if she'd been outlined in red pencil. He pulled her from her seat and folded her in a hug.  
  
"How are you, River?" he said softly in her ear.  
  
She allowed herself one weakness: for the tears buried in her throat to catch and darken in her voice. "I miss him already. Just like I – "  
  
The Doctor pulled back, let his hands linger on her shoulders. "Just like what?"  
  
"Like I miss you, every time you go."  
  
"Is she going to see him again, Doctor?" said Rory, reminding River that her parents had come too.  
  
"Sit down, everyone. I'll get a round of drinks. I promise the beer won't taste funny, Rory."  
  
"I've got mine," said River, lifting her glass.  
  
The Doctor returned with a tray with three ambers. He left a line of foam on his upper lip when he drank. He looked at River, his eyes serious over his foamy mouth. "He's gone to the Time Agency."  
  
"The Time Agency," River said slowly. "The Silence taught me I had to watch out for them. If I interfered with a major temporal event while trying to find you, they might come after me."  
  
"Amateurs," said the Doctor, taking another drink, leaving a sedimentary layer of foam atop the first. "Sorry, Rory, this does taste funny. I don't like it at all."  
  
"I'll take yours," Rory offered. "I like it a lot, actually."  
  
The Doctor pushed his beer toward Rory. "They started off as a good idea. Got to have somebody preventing grandfather paradoxes when there's time travel technology about. By this time, though, the Time Agency's rotting from the inside. Too much power and no responsibility. He'll do his best to start, but then he'll be assigned a partner with no morals and a supervisor with no integrity. One day, he'll wake up with two years of his memories gone."  
  
"That will be the day when he'll leave the Time Agency and swear revenge. He'll steal their tech and con them for whatever he can take them for. But he'll be just one man, alone, with time travel technology and a grudge. One day, he'll slip up, and nearly corrupt the Earth's timeline in 1941. That's when Rose and I will come in."  
  
"Who's Rose?" said Amy.  
  
"A woman who used to travel with me," the Doctor said softly, fondly.  
  
"Like us," said Rory.  
  
"Like you," said the Doctor. "So we will find him, and we will help him see that he can have more in his life than bitterness and revenge."  
  
River reached out and squeezed the Doctor's hand. She wondered if it would hurt as much for Jermain as it had for her, to realize that he could have been so much more, and instead had wasted years of his life on a fruitless vendetta.  
  
"How long were you together?" River asked. "In your personal timeline, of course."  
  
"Six months, more or less," the Doctor murmured.  
  
"Did he leave, or did something happen?"  
  
"He... I..." The Doctor averted his eyes. "I left him."  
  
"Like me?" River said. "Because you had to preserve the timeline?"  
  
"No," the Doctor whispered. "I didn't have to. But I did."  
  
"Where? Why? Did you even tell him why?" Her skin felt tight and hot everywhere. The Doctor had left her, but she'd wanted it that way, she'd needed space to find who she was. If the Doctor had left her when she wanted to stay...  
  
"On an empty satellite orbiting the Earth in the 201st century, because I was afraid of him, and no."  
  
Before she even had time to breathe, she felt a hot sting on her palm as she slapped the Doctor across the face. "How dare you." All the reasons the Silence had told her she ought to kill the Doctor rose up again in her mind, buried but never unlearnt: _he lavishes love on the universe's most dreadful villains, he treats his truest friends like scum and shapes them into weapons, he cannot be trusted with anything good or beautiful..._ "How dare you to that to him! Have you ever apologized?"  
  
The Doctor's eyes flicked up toward hers, for just a moment, and River saw the shame glow there as brightly as the livid handprint she'd left on his cheek. "Not exactly, no."  
  
"Get out," River said quietly.  
  
"River, please – " Rory began.  
  
"You can stay, Mum and Dad. The Doctor will wait outside until you're ready to go. Right, Doctor?"  
  
The Doctor stood. "Right." And he left without another word.  
  
"Don't let him do that to you," River said to her parents. "You deserve better. When the time comes for you to leave, you ought to have a chance to say goodbye."  
  
"We don't want to leave," said Amy.  
  
"I know. But you can't stay with him forever. You'll get too old for all that running one day." River raised her glass. "Here's to that day being far away."  
  
River noticed that Rory's glass clinked against hers at the same time Amy's did. It didn't surprise her. Rory had fought boys twice his size who tried to bully her and Amy, after all. The Doctor's thirst for justice wherever he went was in her father, too.  
  
"You didn't have to do that," Rory said gently. "I'm sure the Doctor would have listened to what you have to say."  
  
"I did have to. That's not why I asked him to leave." River drained the last of her drink. "I know this isn't easy for you to hear, but the Silence raised me to hate him, to use that anger against him. If he'd stayed, I might have hurt him worse. I couldn't bear that. He knows it."  
  
"Oh, River," said Amy, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "We are so sorry."  
  
"I know. But being sorry doesn't help."  
  
"What does help?" Rory said.  
  
"Being my parents." River gave him a peck on the cheek. "That always helps."

 

_Somewhere along the M4, United Kingdom, 1994._

 

They left Melody by the side of a highway in the pouring rain.  
  
She knew what to do in this situation. They'd taught her. She should charm someone into giving her a ride, use roundabout questions to figure out when and where she was, get to a computer, and hack her way into the highest-security system she could find. This was probably a test to make sure she could do it right.  
  
But she didn't do what she was supposed to. She was cold, wet, and ached to her bones. She'd just passed her pain tests. She couldn't take any more. They'd punish her for this, she knew, but it felt so good just to lie there in the soft mud and feel the rain rinse away the dried blood caking her skin.  
  
Soon, she began to shiver so hard her whole body convulsed with the force of it. One of the cars on the highway pulled over. Melody squinted against the glare of its headlights. A silhouette was outlined against them, and grew larger until they weren't so painful to look at. Someone was standing over her who sparked against her time sense like hot tinder. She ought to be afraid. She didn't have the energy to do anything but shiver.  
  
A man's voice, confident, with a soft edge. "Hey, kid. Let me help you up. Relax, I'm here to help." Strong hands grabbed under her armpits and hauled her up. She struggled in his grip, then slumped against him, felt the scratch of heavy wool against her face. Her teeth chattered so hard they felt like living things jumping under their own power.  
  
"That's it. Don't worry. Elaine, blast the heat and open the back door."  
  
Melody was laid out in the backseat of the car, and a large warm hand stroked her hair. The heat registered as pain at first, her fingers and toes prickling with agony as they slowly got feeling back. Her time sense jangled alarm at nothing she could make out. She heard a low, soothing voice speak nonsense to her as she struggled through it. Was this another pain test? But it couldn't be. The Silence wouldn't send someone to talk to her and touch her so gently, like she was a child to look after. Still, she held onto consciousness with all her strength. She couldn't afford to give up alertness.  
  
Her world narrowed to the motion of the car, the low murmur of the man's voice, the weight of his hand on her shoulder, the flash of passing cars' headlights through the window, and the trickling of seconds. An hour and a half later, the man picked her up and took her back out into the cold. Her body quivered against him, but thankfully the exposure didn't last long. She was indoors, somewhere windowless with high ceilings. He set her down in a chair in a plain little bedroom, no furniture in it but the chair, a bed, and a writing desk.  
  
He knelt beside her chair so he was closer to eye level. "Hi. My name's Jack. What's your name?"  
  
"Melody."  
  
He laid some folded clothes on the bed. "Nice to meet you, Melody. Can you put those on yourself, or do you need Elaine to help you?"  
  
Melody looked up at the man. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and wore a long blue coat. His blue eyes were soft and bright. She wanted to say she didn't need help, but she ached all over. _If you can't do it yourself, win allies to your side. Charisma is a weapon too,_ Madame Kovarian whispered in her thoughts. She nodded.  
  
"Are you human?" said Jack. "It doesn't matter whether you are or not. I only ask so I know whether I can give you medicine."  
  
The man knew about aliens. He'd found her by the side of the highway. Her time sense went awfully strange around him. He knew things. That made him dangerous, no matter how nice he'd been. Melody weighed the question. She didn't have to say what type of non-human she was.  
  
"No," she said. She could have explained more, that she couldn't take aspirin or general anesthetics but anything else would be fine, but she looked like a little girl to him, and she didn't want to ruin that useful illusion.  
  
"Do you have anywhere to stay here on Earth? Family? Friends?"  
  
Melody bit her lip. There had been no sign from the Silence. She was beginning to think this might be real, that they really had left her on Earth. Was she done with her training, then? She said, "No."  
  
"Then I'll find a place for you, sweetheart. You know where you could go? I know an incredible woman named Mary Sangster. She has a daughter named Alice, but she's grown up and off at university. Mary knows about aliens and they don't frighten her at all. She lives in a little town in England called Leadworth. She could take care of you."  
  
Melody's heart raced. Leadworth. That was where her parents lived. Madame had told her so. She was on Earth for a reason. And this man with kind strong hands and a blue coat had shown her the way. "Thank you," she said in a small voice. That wasn't charisma; she hadn't meant it to come out that way. But it had.  
  
"Stay strong, Melody. Elaine will be right in to help you with those clothes." He squeezed her hand and left. He murmured something low, and a tough-looking woman with red hair came in and started fussing over her. As Elaine peeled the rain-soaked shirt off her body, Melody heard the man say, "Lucia. Listen, don't hang up. There's a little girl only you can help."  
  
Melody let the woman towel her off and put warm new clothes on, and wondered what it would be like to have parents. If it meant people treated her like this all the time, she thought it must be terrifying.

 

_The TARDIS, anywhen._

 

River padded through the corridors barefoot, letting her contentment seep out through the soles of her feet and color the TARDIS' hum with cake frosting and nightingale song. The Doctor was doing the same thing somewhere else, though his way was with wires and goggles and his sonic screwdriver. The TARDIS couldn't be a part of their first lovemaking, but they could share with her the way it made them feel, which made sure she didn't feel left out. The Doctor's scratches on her back prickled, and the bitterness of his come lingered in her mouth, and now River felt the TARDIS turning these sensations over in her thoughts like gems, watching how all the facets shone.  
  
"I've shown you something new. I've pleased you," River said. "Would you like to return the favor?"  
  
There was no response, but then, she didn't expect one. She kept walking. She opened a door.  
  
The hairs on the back of her neck pricked up. There were wicker chairs, rush mats, a low nest of a bed lined with pillows. The tapestries on the walls were unfamiliar, but she recognized their vivid blues and rustic style.  
  
There was a woven basket next to one of the chairs. River knelt beside it, the rushes crackling beneath her knees. In the basket was a discharged sonic blaster, a hat with the badge of the RAF, a lock of blonde hair tied with pink ribbon, a stick of charcoal, and a drawing.  
  
There was a man and woman, outlined in elegant sweeps of charcoal. The woman was young, her hair plaited, her mouth slightly parted. She held the man's hand, not tightly, but easily, their fingers interlocking like puzzle pieces. Had to be Rose, had to be her hair bound in ribbon beside the drawing. The man's face was angular, his cheekbones shaded for contrast, and his hair was cropped close as a soldier's. Yet Jack had left little sparks of white space when he'd shaded his eyes and hers, creating the impression that whatever they were looking at, somewhere off the page, must be captivating. How long had he watched them, how finely had he committed the shapes of their faces to memory, to create this?  
  
What a man this was, who had brought tapestries to Luna from a home he never spoke of, who had let her whisper her greatest secrets in his ear in the nest of his bed and never asked about the thousand little ones she couldn't say, who had been led from the path of bitterness and revenge by two beautiful time travelers and then left behind for no reason she could fathom. Her lips should be on his now, her hands caressing his neck. She loved the Doctor, and he had shattered the life of a man she loved, who in his turn loved them both. River was not Jack. Her heart could not hold so much love and so many contradictions.  
  
"Thank you," River said to the TARDIS. She held the upper edge of the drawing gently between two fingers. "I need to find him now."  
  
She left the room, walked, and there was a panel open in the wall, with the Doctor in front of it mending a pipe. He looked up from his work, pushed his goggles up on his head, and pocketed his sonic screwdriver.  
  
River held up the drawing. "You do know Jack loves you, right? You can't possibly be that oblivious."  
  
The Doctor stared at the drawing and swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "Of course I know."  
  
River just kept looking him in the eye. Minutes stretched.  
  
Finally, the Doctor said, "River, what do you know about the Time War?"  
  
"The Silence taught me it's a crucial part of your history, though they were thin on the details."  
  
The Doctor put his fingertips behind the bottom edge of the drawing and pushed it upward so he could look down at his old face. "This me was fresh from the Time War. Still bleeding. He kept that jacket, and shaved his hair, so he wouldn't forget what he had become. It was Rose who reminded me that the universe wasn't a battlefield anymore." He looked up from the drawing. "Did he tell you that he was once a soldier?"  
  
"Yes," said River. "When we slept together, he had nightmares, and he said I should talk him through them instead of shaking him awake. I heard what he shouted at night." _Don't take him,_ he'd pleaded, _he's a prisoner, you can't do that to him, he surrendered._  
  
The Doctor nodded. "I heard it too. And he heard me. We'd be awake together when Rose was asleep, and I'd teach him how to fly the TARDIS. We'd park it over a supernova and have a cocoa. With little marshmallows. Always loved the little marshmallows."  
  
"And you left him," said River. "Why?"  
  
"Because Daleks attacked the Earth, and Jack and I were about to die. We tried to protect Rose, but she's brilliant and strong, she wouldn't have it. So she tore open the TARDIS and merged with her heart, and their power was vast and burning. They turned the Daleks to dust and brought life back into Jack's body. The Daleks were the smaller miracle. Jack is a fixed point in time. The end comes for us all, but not him." The Doctor tilted his head so his eyes were shadowed into hollows in his face. "You know what I am, River. You know what I could do with that power. I could chain him inside the TARDIS and use him as fuel to remake the universe. I was afraid."  
  
"I felt something," River said. "When I first met him. Something in my time sense that said he was... wrong. But I ignored it. I was just a child, and I knew better than to listen."  
  
"I know," said the Doctor. "He's made the best of immortality, the best any human could, I suppose, but it's been hard on him. If you live long enough, the choices you make get harder and harder, until you make the one you can't live with. But Jack hasn't got a choice."  
  
"All because Rose loved him," River said. "So what was the choice he made?"  
  
"He killed a child to save the world. His grandchild." The Doctor brushed a fingertip across the drawing of his former self's face. "I killed 2.47 billion children in the Time War, but none of them were mine."  
  
"You're going to find him," River said.  
  
"Yes," the Doctor said. "I am."  
  
He took her by the hand and led her to the console room. She watched him program the TARDIS, felt her shudder and groan around them. The Doctor pushed the door open and leaned his head out. "Hello, Jack," he said quietly, and she could hear the tiny soft smile on his face. "Care to come in?"  
  
The Doctor came back hand in hand with Jack, looking just as surprised at the arrangement as River was. Jack wore nothing but a sarong, and River caught the Doctor's eyes straying to where it hung low over one hip, exposing the sharp cut of muscle inside his pelvic bone.  
  
Jack seemed to have noticed it too. He seized the Doctor by the shoulders and snogged him thoroughly and expertly – sucking hard on the Doctor's lower lip, he loved that, River had discovered – until the Doctor came away with unfocused eyes and the hint of a stupid smile tugging at his parted mouth.  
  
"Oh," the Doctor said. "Hello to you too, Captain."  
  
River gave a hiccup of surprised laughter. Jack looked back and forth between her and the Doctor, standing there frozen, and raised his eyebrows.  
  
"Darling," River said. "You just gave him his first kiss. With you, at any rate."  
  
"Oh! I guess there had to be a first. Sorry, Doctor. Let's start over." Jack touched the Doctor lightly on the shoulder. "Doctor, would you like a kiss hello?"  
  
The Doctor blushed and mumbled something River couldn't make out.  
  
"What was that, Doctor?" Jack said.  
  
"I suppose – I mean, if you'd like to, again, but – it was – Jack, I owe you an apology!" he blurted out. "The universe's biggest. I ought to rearrange a few dozen stars to spell out 'SORRY.' That's why I found you, I've needed to for ages, but the last me never did it, because back then I was a self-absorbed, spiky-haired, inconsiderate – "  
  
Jack pressed a finger to the Doctor's lips, still red and swollen from the kiss. "I'm not the one you need to apologize to. Save it for my younger self. I really needed it."  
  
"Well, apparently he didn't make a complete mess of it, or you wouldn't be here," River said.  
  
"Shh. That's one of our little secrets." Jack grinned. "By the way, that wasn't his first kiss with me. Did he tell you about the time with me and Rose?"  
  
"You didn't! Doctor, I'm disappointed."  
  
"It was one night," the Doctor mumbled.  
  
"You owe me a snog. Both of you. The two of you in one TARDIS are giving me ideas."  
  
"Ideas, huh?" Jack glided closer. "Care to share with the class?"  
  
River looked into his eyes and felt more than one type of shiver. He knew who she was, this older Jack, possibly in ways she didn't know herself yet. This regeneration was still so new.  
  
"The Doctor and I have only slept together the once," River said, drawing him close enough so he could feel her breath on his mouth. "You know each of our bodies better than the other does." She purred into his ear, "I'd like you to teach us everything. If you're willing." Her eyes flicked to her husband. "If the Doctor is willing."  
  
"Yes, please, count my vote as a yes," the Doctor said.  
  
"Of course," Jack said. "Oh, River. You don't even know yet how beautiful you can be, the two of you together. It's an inspiration."  
  
"Show me," River said breathlessly.  
  
"Come here, Doctor," Jack said heatedly. "There are some things I need to show River."  
  
The Doctor drifted over as if in a trance. Jack kissed her deeply, threaded his fingers through the Doctor's hair, and pulled him close. "Lesson number one: the Doctor wants you to tell him what to do."  
  
"I do?" the Doctor said.  
  
"Get down on your knees," Jack said. "I'm going to unfasten River's trousers."  
  
"All right, yes, I do," the Doctor agreed, and his knees hit the floor a second later.

 

_Th'tara Space Station, Antarean System, 2013._

 

Jack watched through the window of the space station as the still-glowing debris that had once been a spaceship of the 456 drifted like tar on the surface of a filthy ocean. Dead leaves caught by the artificial breeze skittered around his feet like dead insects. Behind him, he heard a sharp intake of breath. He didn't turn around.  
  
A pair of hands appeared beside his on the sill of the space station window. He kept staring outward, trying to form constellations from the random scatter of twisted metal. He saw no smiling faces, no familiar landmarks, just jagged wounds in the blackness of space.  
  
"Did it make you feel any better?" said the person beside him. He knew that voice. He had last heard her make a promise to find him again. There had been times, when he'd been stuck in a five year time loop with a man he didn't know whether to kiss or kill, when he'd woken up with a gaping hole in his memories, when he'd slept in alleys in the streets of Cardiff, that he'd thought of that promise, and let it shed a thin sliver of hope across a dark moment. He certainly didn't expect any miracles now.  
  
"You finally show up after all these years just to patronize me?" Jack snapped, then shut his mouth with a click. How was she here, now? This was 3000 years before their time together at Luna University. _I have my little secrets too,_ she'd said, all those lifetimes ago. She was a time traveler too.  
  
"You said you didn't trust yourself with time travel," he said quietly, the coals of anger in his chest suddenly banked.  
  
"I don't," said River. "I hitch rides from professionals. And I wasn't patronizing you. I'd really like to know."  
  
"Why?" He forced himself to look at her, finally. She looked just the same as she had when he was 23 and longing to make something more in the world than destruction.  
  
"You saw... how I was treated, as a child." She looked away, stared out the window, so that fragments of orange light from the wreck shone on her face. "I've often wondered how it would feel if I hunted down the woman who did that to me. If I killed her and all the monsters who worked for her. I could do it, if I wanted. So I'd like to know: would it be worth it?"  
  
"I never met you as a child. What are you talking about?"  
  
"Yes, you did. It was the first time anyone was ever kind to me. I'll never forget it." She met his eyes. "I was called Melody then, Jack Harkness."  
  
He felt a pain in his chest so sharp he hissed out a breath through his teeth. An armful of soaking wet, shivering girl, too quiet for a child in so much pain, too serious in her eyes for one so young, nothing like Alice at that age. Nothing like River, but hadn't she whispered in the undemanding silence of his darkened bedroom that she'd never had the chance to be a child? Hadn't she warned him, as he'd warned her, that if he shook her awake from sleep she'd cry out and hit him? But it was impossible, Melody had...  
  
A different face.  
  
"Time Lord," Jack whispered. "It's always a Time Lord, isn't it?"  
  
"Part Time Lord," said River. "It's complicated."  
  
"What are you to the Doctor, then? His daughter? His ex? His other archrival?" The anger flared again. She could have warned him. She could have said he was as cruel as he was inspiring, as alluring and capricious as a trickster god.  
  
"His wife."  
  
"The man you loved, who you knew wouldn't abandon you. How's that worked out?"  
  
River's calm voice wavered. "Jack, I'm sorry. I gave him a proper slap when he told me what he did to you. I almost hurt him worse. I was so angry. And so afraid that he might do the same to me, one day."  
  
"He won't, River. He married you. That means something, right?"  
  
"I think so. I hope so. But if he gave you a TARDIS key..." Jack nodded, just a fraction. "Then that means something too."  
  
"I don't have it anymore." Jack touched the place on his chest where he'd sometimes kept the key hanging on a chain. He'd held onto it for centuries, but he'd lost it in the explosion that tore his body and the Hub into fragments.  
  
"I haven't got a wedding ring. Does it matter?" River turned to him and held out her hand. "The Doctor wants to talk to you. He's been searching. Will you come?"  
  
Jack took her hand.  
  
River raised her eyebrows. "I thought you'd be harder to convince. I would be, in your place."  
  
"I know his hearts are in the right place. I saw him after the 456 – you must know what I – " River nodded. "Yeah. He shook me out of a bad place. Introduced me to a bright-eyed young thing who wanted to see the universe."  
  
The corner of River's mouth curled up. She started to lead him away from the window. "Works on you too?"  
  
"Yeah. It... gives you perspective. Makes the universe something more than a graveyard. He didn't say sorry. He didn't say anything. But I got this feeling, like he wanted to do something right by me, for once. I still don't trust him, but I still – well. You know."  
  
"I trust him, but he's not everything." River led him through the mostly-empty wing of the space station, the winds of its artificial autumn tugging at her dress. "No one can be everything to another person. You've got to have something else."  
  
"The Doctor and Rose were everything to me. I guess that was my mistake."  
  
River squeezed his hand. "No. Not your mistake. His." She led him into a service corridor, covered in cleaner bots recharging themselves on panels in the walls and ceiling. "You didn't answer my question."  
  
"What – oh." He looked down at their joined hands, drawing strength. "It doesn't make me feel any better about what happened. Those aren't the ones who came to Earth anyway – just another group of junkies looking for their next fix." He spat those words out like poison. "But at least I know that they won't hurt any more children. So yeah, I'd say it's worth it."  
  
"The Doctor says it isn't. But then, he shows more mercy than he ought, sometimes."  
  
"And not enough when he should."  
  
Any more conversation they might have had was cut off by a sound that Jack thought he'd never hear again. The TARDIS' wheezing sigh filled the service corridor as she pulsed into view at its end.  
  
"Right on time," River said, raising her voice to be heard over the rush of displaced air. Her curls danced around her face. Jack held tight to her hand.  
  
With the other, he reached out and touched the TARDIS. "Hello, girl," he whispered.  
  
"Oh! She likes you."  
  
Jack smiled. "I know."  
  
The door swung inward. A young man dressed like an old professor leaned out. Jack stared. He knew those eyes, that chin.  
  
"Hello, Captain. It's good to see you." He smiled, soft and slow. It had been so long since the Doctor had smiled, really smiled, while looking at him. It made his stomach flutter as much as it always had.  
  
"You," Jack whispered. "You're him. The stranger who helped me out of my old house. That was you."  
  
"Yes, that was me. I think it may have been the universe trying to remind me what an absolute plonker I've been, but it took a while for it to sink in."  
  
"It wasn't sinking fast enough," said River. "I had to attach lead weights."  
  
"You could have died in there," said Jack, "just to help me fetch some old tapestries. It didn't really register back then, but I kept thinking about that, years later. You risked your life."  
  
"They weren't just some old tapestries," the Doctor said, and in that moment, looking into his eyes, Jack wondered how he ever could have thought this man was young.  
  
"No. They weren't. But I lost them, Doctor. When I quit the Time Agency, they didn't give me time to pack. They changed the lock on my door. I left everything behind that I didn't have on me."  
  
"Come in, Jack," the Doctor said. "There's something I have to show you."  
  
Jack looked at River. She gestured for him to go in. He did.  
  
"Oh, you beauty," he breathed. He drank in the orange light through his skin like sunshine. "You just get lovelier every time I see you."  
  
The Doctor beamed at him, then twirled around and clapped his hands, glowing with pride. Jack followed him through the console room, up a set of stairs, and then the Doctor was pulling something long and heavy out of a closet. It was a tube of rolled up thick fabric, dappled in shades of gold and vivid blue. The Doctor set it down slowly, reverently, in Jack's waiting arms.  
  
He looked down at the tapestries made by his grandmothers and their foremothers before them. They even smelled the same as they had: fabric cleaner, old cloth, and that hint of sea salt that had never gone away in all his hours scrubbing off the ash. "Why?" he croaked. "How? When?"  
  
"In reverse order: while River was fetching you just now, by breaking into the Time Agency's Internal Affairs division – dreadful lot, those – and because I thought it would be better than just saying 'sorry' a lot. Though I can do that too, if you like, because I am. If I made a list of all the times I've been a knob where you're concerned, it would be, er, something that's like a very long list."  
  
"I think a few of those deserve a special mention, Doctor," River said.  
  
"Yes. Right. Well, I never actually said sorry for leaving you behind on Satellite Five, so that's a good start. And then when I saw you again I treated you like a leper, a very untrustworthy leper at that, and then I kept disabling your Vortex manipulator and then, er, the 456." His twirling arms went still. "I'm sorry, Jack. I couldn't interfere. The only other way it could have ended would have been with all those children turned into..."  
  
"I figured." He looked at River. "I shouldn't forgive him, should I?"  
  
"I can't make that decision for you. He forgave me for trying to murder him, and I'm still not entirely sure why."  
  
"You ought to know by now," the Doctor said to River. "But the decision is yours, Captain. River's been learning to fly the TARDIS. If you want, she can drop you off wherever you like, and you won't have to see me again. I'd understand."  
  
"I'd understand it, too. Better than I understand what I really want," said Jack. He put down the tapestries and leaned the tube against the wall. "The truth is, I can't imagine life without you. Either of you. But River, you're right. I need something that's mine. So I forgive you, Doctor. But I don't trust you. You have to earn that."  
  
"What would you like me to do?"  
  
"Help me find a place where I can do something worth doing. Help me figure out where an immortal fits in this mixed-up universe. Drop me off. Then come back for me. Come  <i>back</i>, the way you do for River. Keep doing that. Then I'll know you're not the man who abandoned me on a battlefield full of the people I led to their deaths."  
  
"I will. I promise."  
  
The TARDIS key had been a promise, and he'd broken that. Jack wasn't sure he believed the Doctor, but he was sure River would do right by him. So he let himself believe.  
  
"You look exhausted," River said.  
  
He was. He'd spent weeks planning the spaceship's destruction. He'd saved up, charmed and bluffed the right people in the black market, made his way onto the team repairing the ship in dry dock, and planted the bomb in the cargo hold where they kept the children, mercifully empty during this stop. The last real spark had drained out of him when he watched the 456 die by his hand.  
  
"Is my room still here?"  
  
"Of course," River said. "But, if you'd like, you can sleep with us."  
  
Jack laughed weakly. "River, you've caught me at the one time in my life when I really don't think I – "  
  
"Not like that, if you'd rather not. Just to sleep. You were always so much more alert in class after we started sleeping together. I was too."  
  
Jack glanced sidelong at the Doctor. The way he looked at Jack made his mouth go dry. He looked at Jack's hands, and his own hands twitched. His eyes traced the outline of Jack's mouth, and his own lips parted. He said, "I'm an excellent cuddler."  
  
"Like an octopus," River said. "You'll swear he has eight limbs."  
  
Oh, he was weak. He was so weak. But hadn't he wanted this long enough? Didn't he deserve it? No, he didn't. But neither did the Doctor. River was the best of them, and he knew she wanted this as much as he did. He reached out and took the Doctor's hand with his left, River's with his right. "I hope your bed is roomy."  
  
"It will be in a moment." The Doctor rubbed the wall affectionately. "The TARDIS approves, the sly old dog." He and River led Jack toward their bedroom. "So, nothing but sleep tonight, scout's honor. But River and I are going to do some kissing before we go to bed, because I want to thank her for bringing you here and I've found I like kissing her very much, even though it does get a bit wet. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, if you'd like to be a part of the kissing, both of us would be pleased as punch. Whatever that means. Tickled pink! No, that doesn't make sense either. Never mind. But please, feel free – "  
  
River let go of Jack's hand to open a door, and Jack seized the moment to pull the Doctor in by the shoulders and kiss him. It wasn't kind. He wanted to devour the Doctor, everything about him Jack hated and loved and didn't understand. If the Doctor gasped in pain, that would be beautiful, and if he hummed in pleasure that would be beautiful too. He needed it all, now, at once.  
  
But it wasn't at all what he'd come to expect, from that one glorious fevered night he and Rose had had with the Doctor. The Doctor's mouth parted in surrender. He melted against Jack, boneless, erasing every tiny gap between them. Everything Jack did, hard sucks and sharp nips and probing sweeps of his tongue, he accepted with tiny appreciative moans.  His hands floated up to Jack's cheeks, caressing, pulling him in.  
  
Warmth at Jack's back, and hot breath in his ear: "This is the one time when he likes being told what to do." Her hand reached out to smooth the Doctor's hair. "Isn't it beautiful?"  
  
It was too much. Jack pulled back, gasping for air. Even those breaths tasted like sex and spit and the Doctor. It was as if he'd crawled under Jack's skin. "You're dangerous," he growled. "I could lose my head completely if you're not careful."  
  
"What's dangerous?" the Doctor said. His lips were rough from the kiss.  
  
"You," said Jack, pressing tiny kisses to his nose, his brow, his cheeks. "You, you, you."  
  
River insinuated her arm over the Doctor's shoulders and pulled him in for a kiss of her own, gentler but no less assertive, tilting his head back with it. She pulled him into the bedroom and pushed the jacket off his shoulders.  
  
"I like the bowtie, by the way," Jack said. "Classic."  
  
"See? Jack thinks it's cool. Oh! I forgot your tapestries!"  
  
"I'm sure the TARDIS will keep them where I can find them."  
  
"It's the principle of the thing." His suspenders hanging down, shirtsleeves unbuttoned, the Doctor rushed off to fetch the tapestries.  
  
Jack shrugged off his own coat, sat on the bed, and started working on his boots. River sat beside him and kissed him softly. "Before the Doctor comes back, I need to ask a favor."  
  
"Name it."  
  
"Promise to look after him for me."  
  
"Why? You seem to do a fine job yourself."  
  
"I'm not stupid. The way he treats me – he knows my future. I think he knows that he won't have me anymore, one day. He'll have to wipe my memories or leave me behind or something and then he'll be alone, and hurting. But he'll have you. He'll always have you."  
  
"He's your husband, River. You're the one who has him forever. Isn't that what you promise at a wedding?"  
  
"Not forever. I gave up the rest of my regenerations to save him from my own poison. This is the only life I've got, and one day it'll run out. But not yours, Jack. With you, he'll never have to be alone. Promise me."  
  
He looked in her eyes and saw anguish. It rubbed him raw. "If you're gone, River, then who's going to take care of me?"  
  
"I'll make him promise the same for you. Eventually. He's not ready for it yet. You can see it with clear eyes. You know that everything can be stripped away."  
  
Jack swallowed. "Yeah."  
  
"Sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. Party foul." She knelt before him and peeled off his socks, then unbuckled his belt.  
  
"Got them!" The Doctor set the tapestries down in the bedroom and unclipped his suspenders.  
  
"Keep your pants and vest on," said River, "or I'll be sorely tempted to break the rules."  
  
"You'd better keep your underwear on, then," the Doctor said. "I'm fairly certain your breasts are worshipped as sex idols on twelve planets. Or if they're not, they ought to be."  
  
They crawled into the bed, stripped down to underwear, and found that it was indeed large enough. Jack lay in the middle, and as the Doctor and River's warmth seeped into him, he was brought back to the Boe, where he'd slept every night in the communal bed, with people he loved and trusted surrounding him with their collective embrace. There hadn't been any place to go, any scores to settle, just snoring, the sigh of the sea, and peace.  
  
He had never found anything like it since. But the Doctor and River had come back to him, against all odds, with kind words and open ears. Maybe that peace was out there, somewhere. Maybe he was finally with the only people in the universe who could help him find it.  



End file.
